Weekly News Update: The Matrix is Real And Liam Neeson is my Doctor!

The goal of this little feature is to highlight some of most interesting, most important and most bizarre videogame news from this past week. We’ll grab stories from a variety of sources, and provide you with links to the original source while providing some of our own input.

It seems that those who bought the new Doom 3: BFG Edition might have a bit of a problem playing the copy of the original Doom that comes with the game. It seems that the only way to play this version is to uninstall the entire game, then play Doom, then re install Doom 3. Obviously, this was probably not intentional, and I’d expect news from Bethesda in the near future. Bethesda has also suggested themselves that you “not install Doom 3: BFG“. You know it is a serious issue when a game company tells you not to install their game…

A recent journal has declared that Fallout is, indeed, a good indicator of personality and situation reactions. Building from a study using Neverwinter Nights, Pieter Spronck, Iris Balemans, and Giel van Lankveld have concluded that Fallout 3 can be used as a means of testing the Five Factor Model. Those who were tested were given a series of situations to play through in Fallout 3, and their reactions and choices were used to interpret their behavior. It’s a joy to see psychology and science in general bleeding into the culture of gaming. Speaking of which…

While it is certainly theoretical science, the Huffington Post reports that scientists may have evidence that the universe is a simulation. As in the Matrix. Yes, you read that correctly. The idea hinges on the idea of constraints in the universe, and a simulation of our universe that scientists made that looks startlingly like our own universe. Each simulation would have some kind of limitation that could be measured, usually related to the amounts of energy that can exist in the universe. Go read the science if you want a better explanation, because it fries my brain just thinking about it.

Ubisoft has sued the Black Eyed Peas, to the tune of $1 Million dollars, for the creation of an iOS version of the Wii game ” The Black Eyed Peas Experience”. The questions that might be swimming in your head about videogames, the legal system, creator rights and other issues are unimportant. What should really be asked is who would want to make an iOS version of “the Black Eyed Peas Experience”? I mean…really.

A number of gaming industry veterans have teamed up to form Red Barrels, an indie studio based in Montreal. These veterans, who come from such backgrounds as Army of Two, Uncharted and Assassins’ Creed, are currently working on a survival horror title due out in 2013. I’m sure that, with these kind of credentials, Red Barrels is going to make some superb games in the future. You can find a teaser of their upcoming game Outlasthere, which looks like a pretty great survival horror title.

After the completion of Fable: The Journey, Lionhead studio has conduct a large round of layoffs. This is not particularly surprising as at the completion of projects in the videogame industry, companies will often layoff a large number of people that are no longer needed. Fable: The Journey wasn’t the most successful of games, particularly when compared to the other Fable games. But I’m sure that had nothing to do with this, nothing at all…

…well, if you are a teenage boy. A study out of the University of Adelaide has shown that playing videogames for more than about an hour before sleep can disrupt sleep patterns and the amount of REM sleep one gets. REM sleep is particularly important for memory and cementing information in your brain, such as math formulas for you test, or game statistics for your next late night binge. It’s an interesting observation, and while violent action games were used in this study, the content of the videogames being played has not been tested. So, Bejeweled might be fine, who knows.

[author] [author_image timthumb='on']http://www.puresophistry.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/profile-pic.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Born in Maine, educated in Canada, and forged on the internet, Jacob is a proud gamer, unabashed nerd, and writer. He received his degree in classics from Mount Allison University and his love of stories and their meaning from countless hours spent reading Homer, playing old school RPG’s and studying Joseph Cambell. His one rule to live by? “Always dress as if you were going to give a speech.”[/author_info] [/author]

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About the Author

Born in Maine, educated in Canada, and forged on the internet, Jacob is a proud gamer, unabashed nerd, and writer. He received his degree in classics from Mount Allison University and his love of stories and their meaning from countless hours spent reading Homer, playing old school RPG’s and studying Joseph Cambell. His one rule to live by? “Always dress as if you were going to give a speech.